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If God knows everything, how can there be free will?

now i'm just really bonkers.

first i bow down then i don't kneel but it's ok for jesus to wash my feet and now we're back to smithing and my smithing level is only 6.

i don't think i'll be able to get the fairy wand before the evil sorcerer rains fire and chihuahuas. time to hit the mountain dew and doritos for an all nighter. excelsior!

It's real simple, get on your knees, kneel before God in prayer. Forget all that gibberish you just wrote.
 
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Sorry I couldn't resist... all this talk of getting down on your knees before God. All I can say is... next time be more careful about where you are when eating a hot dog. :D

Anyway aside from my attempts at injecting a little beef levity into this thread... I'm not gonna tell you what to do, please don't tell me what to do. Personally I think questioning is human and is a good thing. I've spoken with a Christian minister I really respected who says that questioning is necessary in order to truly arrive at an understanding, even in religion. Especially in religion. If God doesn't like questions, why did he make us able to ask them?
 
^ HAHAHA! i found that meme just before i started posting on BL. tits! =D

in addition: imho in terms of religion it is good to question and share as interpretation (by those not in an ecumenical seat of power) is one way info gets spread and people learn.

one of my personal philosophies in life and biggest pet peeves Shadowmeister - "I'm not gonna tell you what to do, please don't tell me what to do." (way too much sameness in that post)

@CoastTwoCoast: i've always been hesitant to ask this question to you but most curious as to your response, thankfully a mod broke the ice.
Shadowmeister said:
If God doesn't like questions, why did he make us able to ask them?
 
Sorry I couldn't resist... all this talk of getting down on your knees before God. All I can say is... next time be more careful about where you are when eating a hot dog. :D

Anyway aside from my attempts at injecting a little beef levity into this thread... I'm not gonna tell you what to do, please don't tell me what to do. Personally I think questioning is human and is a good thing. I've spoken with a Christian minister I really respected who says that questioning is necessary in order to truly arrive at an understanding, even in religion. Especially in religion. If God doesn't like questions, why did he make us able to ask them?

Who said God doesn't like questions? Ask God some questions, He might just answer.
 
to get this outta the way and be clear: when i say god here i mean the abraham (christian, jewish and muslim) god unless denoted otherwise.

@treezy z: ya kinda went old school testament on me when i was making a joke to distract from the seriousness of the thread and hopefully get back on topic. the whole topic is based off of free will and god knowing everything, not kneel before god and pray. i'm surprised god doesn't get angry with how gods people are forcing those to understand how to worship god when god specifically states how to and how not to but then again i know better; but not better than god. (this is one thing i have wrong with that religion, the ecumenical politics have edited the word of god to fit man's version of reality and religion for their own purposes)

to be blunt you didn't say word for word that god said don't ask questions but you did tell me not to ask questions.

god actually has the right standpoint on asking questions imo, i think god makes a lot of sense on this one. (btw it's not god i have a problem with, it's gods followers poor choices, whether they follow god or not)

god want's people to ask questions up to a certain point and in certain situations. other than that god says it's totally fine to ask questions. one example is to question your own faith in god and to question god itself until it gets to a detrimental point that causes one to lose one's faith, that's when your "supposed" to stop. another example is asking if the meat you are eating whether from a market or being served as a guest in anothers house is used in sacrificial rituals. cause your supposed to ask and if it is then your not supposed to eat it.

so god wants you to ask questions but god doesn't want you to be forced to worship.

and hopefully CoastTwoCoast hasn't lost the question so i'll pose it here again even though Shadowmeister brought it up, i'm still curious what CoasTwoCoast's response is.

@CoastTwoCoast: what's your take on god and us humans asking questions?

@Shadowmeister: sorry to get all biblical on ya, that's one reason why i stuck to reading the thread at first. i prefer that organic thing you mods and admins enjoy here. me sticking my nose everywhere gets things tossed worse than a salad in a jail cell on fresh fish day. anyway i hope it gets back on track, it was really going somewhere for a second there. (the ashtray play on words, good one.)
 
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No worry inveggy, you all good bro. :)

No I didn't, me saying "stop asking questions" and me saying "God doesn't like questions" are completely different.

Fair point. I guess I don't like people telling me not to ask questions. Asking questions is part of what makes us human. Asking questions is important, if everyone asked questions we wouldn't have groups of people hating other groups of people by default because they're too afraid to look outside the box they were born into.
 
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Being told not to question things regarding a higher power strikes me as dangerous... wolves and sheep and such.
 
^ in this case they'd be the same... unquestioning faith is pretty close to zealotry in a lot of cases.
 
Yes, in fact if you read the Gnostic texts, Jesus wasn't even claiming to be more the son of God than anyone else. My read on the whole thing is that he was a kind and enlightened soul and spiritual teacher who was trying to send the message that we are all part of the divine and if we love each other we can have heaven on Earth. He supported taking care of each other and he supported a departure from the current church of the time (ie, the Old Testament religion). The Roman Catholic church formed about 300 years after his death, and appropriated the texts they found fit into their mission, which was to regain control over the population who had decided to take on Jesus' teachings. Historically, the organized religion of Christianity was founded on social control and maintaining dominance of an empire. None of the books of the official New Testament were written very close to the actual life of Jesus. However, other texts were found with the Dead Sea Scrolls that offer other takes of his teachings and were written earlier, but they were not allowed into the Bible.

The great thing is that we don't need to directly see the original, undoctored texts to know what Jesus was about. This is because his teachings are mirrored in the teachings of other wisdom traditions all over the world. Truth is truth, it doesn't matter what culture is perceiving it.

You can read the same kind of stuff across many religions, yet when you come to Christianity you're supposed to believe that Jesus was the one and only? I don't think so. It's more likely that this name and message have been manipulated for political purposes. I'd say the Abrahamic faiths are all guilty of this, but Christianity is the worst of the three.
 
^ true, for the moist part.

the saying "the devil is in the details" is relevant.
 
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It's true, the closest thing to "the devil" that exists in this world is the argument over the fine details of the same core message. "My details are right!" "no, mine!" "okay let's go to war about it!" (meanwhile the leaders of each country chuckle with glee at the prospect of increased wealth and resources as their unwitting pawns wage a fake "holy war" against each other)
 
^ Yeah, let's fight a war over who's god's dick is bigger. That'll be easy to explain to future generations.
 
South Park succinctly and eloquently illustrated this in their 2-part episode where Cartman freezes himself and gets unthawed in the future to a world where atheism has "prevailed" over religion, but there are 3 groups fighting a war over whose central answer to science is the best.
 
Any god from any given religion is just a different interpretation of the same force of nature that makes everything move forward and created everything that you see. this organized religious interpretation of this higher force is limited to the understanding of the people that created that religion in the first place so you can't expect them to explain the nature of god in a way thats logical to you because they are only expressing their perspective.

I think that the claim that god is omnipotent, omniscient and that other "o" word that I can't remember, is flawed. Its a very general way of describing God. I think god has limits just like we do but they are just different. However I do tend to think that God knows all of the different possibilities that can stem from any decision that comes in our path but the thing that god doesn't know is what path we are going to choose.

And also I think its better to look at it in the sense that we are God and god is a part of us so whenever you refer to God you are referring to the human species as a whole including yourself. Religion tends to separate god from self and thats when our perception of god becomes screwed and we start to resort to skeptism and we start to ask all these questions and try to challenge the contradictions that we find in religions.

If we accepted god as part of ourselves then these questions would answer themselves and they would make a lot more sense to us.
 
i think that first statement is you starting to finally see the picture for what it is.

i think the 4 words your looking for are omniscient omnipotent omnipresent and omnibenevolent. i think you might need to define what those limits are. half agreed with that last part but that's the nice thing about oponions, we all got our own special ones.

i think that sounds very religious of you. i think we resort to skepticism cause fundamentally we're not perfect and doubt enters the picture so we have the necessary friction to fall, get up, learn and party on... err i mean carry on.

i think if we accept a lot of things quiet a few questions will have the answers themselves or reveal themselves to us, the rest we need to work progressively at. i wont know everything by the time i'm dead but i'll find out what i can to the best of my ability.

i like your outlook on what you said in your post and what you outlined in it.
 
i think if we accept a lot of things quiet a few questions will have the answers themselves or reveal themselves to us, the rest we need to work progressively at. i wont know everything by the time i'm dead but i'll find out what i can to the best of my ability.

David said "I don't concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp."
Psalm 131:1

That's a good reminder to quiet your soul and let God handle it.

There were countless times I prayed about a situation, then listened to a sermon and the pastor was talking about what I prayed for and gave me an answer.

No one is perfect, it's not about being perfect. It's about progress. Believers question things too, but it comes back to knowing God's plan for your life are for good, not evil; To give you a future and a hope! All things work together for your good, even things that don't quite make sense right now. Don't be impatient. Keep pressing forward. There are more pieces to the puzzle coming and your life will feel whole and complete. He is directing your steps and your story ends in victory if you're a believer. Remembering that keeps me going whenever doubt creeps in.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word. I grew my faith by listening to pastors who preach about love and grace. Listen to sermons and read the Bible. I bought different spiritual books: "Living the Let Go Life: Breaking Free From Stress, Worry and Anxiety" by pastor Joseph Prince is a great one. The answer doesn't always have to come from pastors, it can come from people you encounter. It happened to me all the time while struggling with an RC drug addiction in the past. I wasn't a believer, but random people would reach out to me. It wasn't a coincidence. I was in a bad place and could've died many times.

Every one has their own journey and every one has free will...leading back to the topic of this thread. There are people who continue to turn their back on the truth and make a mockery of it. We don't know how long we are going to be here. I'm hoping people save their soul before it's too late. If they still don't want to believe, that's their choice.
All I can say is after a decade of being lost and searching, my journey led me to Jesus.

If you have questions, seek God with an open heart and ask for guidance. The truth will be revealed to you.

(That response was also directed to those in this thread who were asking me questions.)
 
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